CYBER SHOCK
by Neil Davies
Summary: Sequel to Timeshock. Can the Doctor save earth's timeline from an old and deadly enemy?


13

CYBER SHOCK 

**By Neil Davies**

Flung back into the smoke filled room and forced to inhale its noxious contents, the Doctor began to cough and retch once more. Still held painfully by the cyber leader he found his jacket starting to rip, and it was one of his favourites to. Quick as an eel he wriggled free of it and left the silver giant holding an empty coat by the collar like some grotesque butler.

Backing up to the sparking, burning cyber chair in which the headmaster was now inert, the time lord quickly scanned its wreckage. Bits hung off in all directions especially a pair of black cables as thick as a garden hose from their ruptured ends golden filaments fizzed and sparkled they were still live.

As the cyber leader lurched towards him – coat discarded – the Doctor seized the two cables by their insulated rubbernecks and swung them up roundhouse style so that each live end struck the alien on the side of his helmet shaped head. A connection was made and live current earthed violently through the voluminous plastic frame. Shaking violently, skin rippling with golden fire and chest unit vomiting hot steam the leader uttered a piercing electronic scream and stumbled sideways off balance.

Releasing the cables the Doctor ran for the still open door, through which he could see Tina stood there observing events, watching impassively but taking no active part in the unfolding drama she was detached almost, he thought, uninterested.

His left arm was grabbed by a new gauntlet and swung around he came face to face with a regular all silver cyber man, twice as big and just as nasty he thought as his arm went numb and morale bottomed out. Pain exploded up through his shoulder into his chest as the cold hand squeezed putting him down onto his knees with a cry of defeat. The flesh is weak which is why we discarded it.

"I give in," he cried as sweat burst from his face but the squeezing did not lessen and he knew that pretty soon his arm bones would snap, the blood vessels pop and tendons rupture he might even lose his arm. A blank faceplate looked down at him without a trace of understanding or compassion, now I know why I hate them so much he thought they are the pitiless face of heartless tyranny.

A second silver hand moved towards his neck, it wouldn't take much pressure there to end his life and that's what this trooper was doing it was killing an enemy, following the program.

Still writhing in electrical agony the cyber leader bounced off a wall and the cables were detached by the impact, the leader slumped his head sagging and arms dropping by his sides to tremble slightly.

The Doctor felt the 'Oh so cold' gauntlet go around his neck, this was it then they had him at last it was payback time.

The flash of blue lightning came out of nowhere, well actually some point over his left shoulder, it struck his opponent right in the chest unit, right in the ventilator part of it and the cyber man jerked back as though kicked releasing his hold to grip the chest unit in poignant distress and dropping to a knee.

"Well come on then," a female voice rasped in the Doctor's ear. "Stop feeling sorry for yourself."

Tina's grip was softer, kinder but just as urgent as she pulled him backwards through the open door, a door he had to close.

Still shaking with the realisation that death had once more brushed his lips without getting a chance to apply the full kiss of goodbye, the Doctor palmed his sonic screwdriver and aimed a wide beam spread at the door. It thunked shut and the edges began to run as the metal first melted then set like butter on a pan.

"Thank you," he said as he switched the sonic beam off.

"Don't thank me I need you, we need each other." She was calm and business-like, practical as ever and coldly impersonal. He looked at her and saw in her eyes something not akin to the icy indifference of that faceplate. Was she any better than them he wondered, different agenda maybe but morally did she stand any higher above the slime?

"There can't be cyber men on earth in 1990," he said.

"Yes you keep saying that but I don't see the relevance."

Moving beyond the door he studied their surroundings a small room that led out onto a wider area decked out with chairs and tables – a canteen.

"I'm thirsty, how about you?"

Entering the canteen cautiously he looked around, no pupils, no teachers and best of all no sign of silver. "Tell me about Chatsworth Technology Tina, what's so important about it that would attract the cyber men? I can't believe they just stumbled over this place by accident."

Reaching a freezer cabinet full of bottled mineral water he defeated its lock easily, 50p for bottled water – robbery? Offering her an Avian he took a Perrier.

"You're the time traveller," she replied flipping the cap with a thumb like she'd been born to do it while he struggled.

"Yes I am and the name doesn't ring any bells, at least it doesn't in any uncorrupted time line but then that's the point the cyber men are changing history, creating a time shock effect."

"Chatsworth," Tina said after taking a much needed gulp of water. "Is the first of its kind, a school devoted entirely to electronic innovation, engineering, cybernetics it attracts the brightest techies of their generation."

"You mean brilliantly creative minds," the Doctor mused his own brilliant mind turning over the implications of this. "Creativity being the key, imagination is one quality the cyber men long ago erased from their minds so now they have to seek it elsewhere."

Tina shrugged, "How does this help us defeat them?"

Drinking his own water the Doctor grimaced at the taste, "Why haven't we seen many of these bright kids so far, where are they all?"

"The vast majority are kept within the computer block wired up to the mainframe."

A bottle of Perrier landed in a metal bin to roll and slosh out its unwanted contents, "Then that's where the solution lies."

She caught his arm as surprised by his heat as he was by her coolness, "We can't get in there it's the most highly guarded place in the school."

His smile told her he wasn't bothered, that he was used to getting into places that where off-limits.

Slumped and inert the cyber leader looked dead, silver gloves went under the armpits yanking him upright but he just hung there like a puppet whose strings have been cut. The cyber man stood behind him extended a jagged beam from its helmet lamp, in reality a sensor probe that washed over the head and upper torso of the leader. Then in a flat, amplified voice the soldier declared.

"Primary power feed deactivated, core energy systems offline."

Another cyber man moved in front of the leader, close enough to touch although no physical contact was made. Its chest unit blazed with light and waves of light rippled outwards until they penetrated the chest of the leader, electricity crackled and within the leader a curious whistling sound could be heard. The leader's chest acquired a few spots of light then a few more, bit-by-bit he was suffused with power from his underling and gradually essential systems came back online. Jerking several times the leader regained control over his limbs. He stood upright and his head rose, strength flooded the vast frame and the fingers of both hands flexed with restored vigour.

"Leader," said the soldier in front of him as the one behind released its supportive grip?

The leader's head turned slowly until the eyeless eye slots were peering at the door now welded shut by sonic technology. The Doctor had escaped but he wouldn't have gone far, he wasn't the type to just abandon a situation not when he thought he could do something about it. He and the female would take further drastic action to sabotage ongoing operations, it wasn't logical but it conformed to the personality profile on record.

"Prepare the secret weapon," said the leader in a deadpan voice. Moving over to a console one of the others placed a palm into a hand-shaped sensor pad, on a screen symbols flashed into being forming a definite pattern.

"Weapon activated leader."

Nodding once the leader went over to the now burned out, largely melted chair its occupant limp and lifeless.

"He will need to be replaced," the headmaster was indicated with a wave.

"The Doctor?" Came the query.

"No, the female is more suitable."

Two guards stood motionless at the head of the corridor one each side of it, they could have been statues or plastic dummies but they weren't the soft pulsation of their chests proved that, cyber guards and each had extra weapons built into their sleeves and necks.

Looking at his companion the Doctor took a silent step back to whisper, "Is there another way?"

She indicated the changing rooms, once through them there was another corridor that bypassed this one.

"We could reach the stairs but they're bound to be guarded to."

"I'm sure they are," taking something from a pocket the Doctor unwrapped it to reveal the artificial heart. Tina had risked her life to get hold of this so it must be a vital component. "You said this proof, proof of what exactly?" he asked.

"Of an alien presence in this timeline."

"Why should you care?"

Features hardening she moved away from him slightly as if insulted, "I'm not some cold-hearted mercenary the cyber men are a menace."

"To earth yes, but you're not from earth."

"Neither are you, Doctor."

No he wasn't but earth was like a second-home, he felt a close kinship to its people and had helped them many times in the past.

"I care about humanity, I don't get the same impression from you I don't think you care about anybody."

"I saved your life back there in case you've forgotten."

Yes she had done that and it was out of character, then he looked at the heart and it occurred to him that Tina hadn't so much saved him as her trophy.

"This is more than just proof the cyber men are on earth," he said applying his screwdriver to the edges of the device until it popped open revealing a tiny nest of complex Nano-processors that chillingly formed a small but still menacing cyber face.

"These are interesting," he said. "The cyber race are; in many respects a mass consciousness, like a series of networked computers all linked by the same frequencies and programs." The heart was waved, "And this is the key to those frequencies and programs, isn't it?"

Features shrewd but unyielding Tina gave little away verbally, so he had to join the dots himself.

"You came here looking for an electronic Rosetta Stone didn't you, a way to destroy the cyber men en masse?"

Still no response no hint he was right or wrong, he went on. "These processors must hold the key, but I'm guessing you don't have the technical knowledge to unlock it so you must be working with someone else." He moved his screwdriver over each processor in turn gathering data.

"Do you have the technical knowledge Doctor?"

His eyes flashed enigmatically, he might have. This heart linked to every other cyber heart, it was a way in a weapon, maybe an Achilles Heel. "Show me this other corridor."

But Tina held her ground, "Tell me something." She said calculatingly. "You wouldn't be interested in a business partnership would you?"

He could tell she was totally serious that she really believed he'd enter into a commercial partnership with her, so was he willing to do so?

"What did you have in mind," he enquired without giving too much away?

"We destroy the cyber men, I don't have a problem with that at all."

There were more to it than that, "And?"

"We harvest their technology with a view to first taking out a patent then marketing it."

"So you're a mercenary," he said flatly.

"I'm an opportunist and this is an opportunity."

That was one way of putting it, he could think of several others. "Do you honestly believe it's wise to hawk cyber technology across the universe, given what it's designed to do?"

"Technology is only as harmful as the people using it," she said smoothly – far too smoothly for his liking. The cyber men weren't the only hostile, aggressive, colonising force on the rampage.

The Doctor's response was to give Tina a rather withering look and shake his head slowly. He said, "It's the people using it that worry me!" He moved away to let her think about that one. By the time she caught him up he was at a junction with stairs on the left, doors ahead and a cyber guard on the right, the guard held a huge silver rifle that was like a series of thick tubes welded together around a cylindrical quartz crystal. The pulsar cannon was a devastating weapon at any range but especially in a confined space like this, no mistakes could be made.

Waving Tina to keep back and keep quite the time lord looked at the artificial cyber heart then his screwdriver, it was time to test a few theories. Putting the business end of one to the core of the other he thumbed 'silent running' and tried a few frequencies going from ultra low to medium then into the high bracket. He had reached the next to top setting when something happened, the heart jerked in his fingers giving off a sharp orange pulsation. Tiny metal seggs jumped from its edges one almost piercing his palm with its sharp tip, a tiny black cylinder rose vertically from the centre top of the device and began to rotate clockwise and the base opened downwards to create a series of petals, light jumped from within this to create an aqua marine ray. The Doctor directed this beam at the cyber guard flashing it over his chest and neck units – nothing happened. Come on he thought do something and quickly please.

The guard saw the light, its eye slots jumped to where the Doctor stood and the great frame turned taking a forward step, the cannon lowered until it was aimed right at its target. Quickly the Doctor gripped the black cylinder atop the heart, he first twisted then plunged it down.

The aqua marine light turned blood red, there was a fierce crackling discharge and the guard lurched backwards dropping its gun arms going into a wild spasm of grasps and waves – it was like a drowning man sinking fast. Incredibly it fell on its back uttering that piercing, synthesized whine the cyber men always made when in distress. The chest unit went dark by degrees and the head lolled to the right, after kicking briefly the legs went rigid but the arms remained up thrust frozen in an aspect of holding something.

"Amazing, did you see that?"

Tina had and hurried over to look appreciatively at first the heart then the body on the ground. "You gave it a heart attack."

"More like an electronic thrombosis."

"So the theory works, they are all linked."

The Doctor seemed amazed fancy his silver enemies having dodgy tickers, who would have guessed?

"We'd better hurry this one will be missed, but as he put a foot on the first step they both heard the scream, a human scream, a girl.

Student the Doctor was thinking but for some reason he instantly dismissed the notion, there was something about that scream that tugged at his memory. I know you lady he realised and I know that scream.

Diverting off course he hurried to a small door just beyond the inert guard and sonic'd it open, gloom hung like a heavy fog and it in were old smells mechanical, greasy and human. Tina dug her nails into his arm _we're wasting time._

Shrugging her off he moved into the gloom, saving a human life was never a waste of time in his book. The scream wasn't repeated so he said gently, "Hello?"

A gasp, a half-cry that might have been relief tinged with hope.

"Where are you?" he demanded poised and ready in case it was a trap with a silver sting in the tail.

"Over here," said a female voice with a soft London twang.

"I can't see very much."

"Mind the cables on the floor, they tripped me up."

They almost tripped him to but he deftly negotiated them to reach the far wall where she stood held there by two restraints, one across the waist and one over the neck like a noose. She wore functional coveralls grey with red piping and black trainers with Velcro not laces, the hair was shorter than he remembered and combed back but there could be no doubt as to who this was and his jaw popped.

Never would he have believed it possible and as Tina caught up with him to ask the inevitable question, he forestalled her by saying.

"She used to be my travelling companion, this is Rose Tyler."

Blinking at them both Rose seemed to fight hard to keep tears at bay but she looked both scared and a little weak. He wanted to ask _how did you get here, I left you somewhere totally different so how did you fall into the clutches of the cyber men?_ But he didn't ask those things because they could wait, it was more important to unlock the restraints so he set about doing this. Tina cried, "Wait, what are you doing?"

"I can't just leave Rose here."

"Yes you can," the tone was unyieldingly sharp.

"Tina either help me or go and watch the door," he could be unyieldingly sharp to. The neck brace came loose and under it Rose's flesh was darkened by bruising.

"Doctor, she doesn't belong here." Tina pointed out.

"Neither do either of us."

"We know how we got here, how did she get here?"

He hated to admit it but Tina was asking the right questions, verbalising what he had only thought and not trusting the evidence of her eyes. She was being cautious even paranoid and he was jumping in feet first as usual.

He paused over the waist band to lick his teeth, "Yes good point, how did you get here Rose?"

Rose – who had been with him in so many adventures – sniffed and closed her eyes against some unspoken horror.

"They tracked me down, abducted me at gunpoint there was nothing I could do; they killed my husband."

"Mickey's dead?" Pain lanced through him at the thought of the gangly youth who had grown into a brave and responsible young man, a man who had joined him in the TARDIS for a while.

"How did they find you?"

"I don't know."

"How long have you been here then?"

"Like I've got a clock," a bit of the old Rose added bite to these words and put a smile on his lips. Tina, who wasn't smiling, stepped back to adjust her ring.

"Sentiment equals death in my game," she said harshly.

The Doctor spun around angrily to snap that they weren't playing her game, she was playing his. But he didn't say that because he didn't get the chance, and he would have been wrong in any case.

Two hands as strong as industrial clamps went around his neck from the rear and squeezed powerfully to close arteries and windpipe then dig into the spine. They weren't human hands not Rose Tyler's hands they were cyber gauntlets with fake human skin painted over them. Rose, or the creature made to look like Rose was killing him and he had foolishly allowed her to get close enough to do it.

Breaking the waistband the facsimile gained a stronger purchase and forced her victim to his feet. Tina aimed her ring.

"Go ahead," Rose sounded amplified now, a synthesizer. "The power will go through me into him, I burn and he burns."

Unable to speak unable to breathe, the Doctor looked up at Tina and saw her misting over as his brain began to shut down due to blood and oxygen starvation, he had seconds left and not many.

Tina for once seemed completely at a loss. He knew that the only person he could rely on was himself, so with his last remaining strength he took out the artificial cyber heart. If it had worked against a guard then it might against this facsimile, it seemed his only chance. The problem was he had little motor control in his fingers, they fumbled perilously and he lost his grip on the heart, it fell towards the floor in an arc.

A hand caught it, and Tina raised the heart so Rose could see it then she inverted her other hand and touched her ring to it, the ring flashed, the heart flashed. With a scream rose let go and staggered back, hands tearing at her ribs. Dropping to all fours the Doctor sucked air into burning lungs as blood coursed back into a starved brain roaring like a waterfall.

Rose uttered a piercing cry and began to convulse, her artificial face beginning to deform out of shape as the synthetic skin began to chip away, a blank silver mask was revealed beneath.

"No, don't destroy it." The Doctor croaked.

"Why not, it's one of them?" Tina objected.

"Exactly," picking himself up the time lord held onto a portion of wall he felt dizzy and sick, he could hardly see properly and his brain felt swollen with returning blood. Producing his screwdriver he pushed Tina's ring aside and seized the heart, "We can control this fake, use it for our own purposes."

Rose slumped onto her haunches appearing semi-conscious. The Doctor fired a medium strength sonic beam into the heart's CPU adjusting the tiny chips inside. The fake Rose jerked an arm then a leg, she sat bolt upright her head rising slowly.

"Doctor," she said.

"Very good," he mused. "Now stand up."

Awkwardly the facsimile climbed erect, swayed a little then came to attention. Its face was half human, half cyber and a shocking travesty of his former companion.

"How can this thing help us," Tina demanded without much conviction?

"Oh you'd be surprised. Rose, I want you to come with us upstairs there's something I need you to do."

The now buzzing, rasping voice responded. "My function is to kill."

"Yes I know," said the Doctor. "And that's just what you're going to do." Winking at Tina, the time lord adjusted some settings and the strange puppet jerked forwards like a toy robot moving past him towards a door. As he made to follow his partner snagged an arm,

"This is not a good idea, what if you lose control of that thing?"

Then it would try to kill him again maybe both of them, it was a risk but without taking risks they weren't going to achieve much.

There were rows and rows of terminals and attached to each terminal was a teenager, a cable ran from each kid's head unit to a computer screen and some kind of data was being uploaded. Mass programming the Doctor mused, a direct link between a machine and human brain with the machine in control. How many kids were there, dozens most likely?

"Digital hell," the Doctor muttered. "Broadband brains."

Also shocked but not as prosaic by nature Tina moved to the nearest kid a girl and looked into her eyes, they were full of text.

"Mondas, the next generation." The Doctor said, "I can't and won't let this happen."

He worked the heart and Rose stumbled forwards through the massed ranks of wired up computer kids.

"What's the plan," asked Tina?

"Use a thief to catch a thief," she was told as the doctor went up to Rose and slowly handed her the cyber heart much to Tina's horror.

"Why have you done that?"

"Because she can do more damage with it than I can."

"If she sabotages anything in here these kids will probably die."

A look of deep disquiet on his face the Doctor stared at the serried banks of a vast mainframe that filled the entire back wall, could he disconnect these kids without harming them could he free their minds of the poison already inputted? "Tina if I don't stop this obscenity these children will just for the first of millions wired up to a giant computer brain with no minds or will of their own, little more than software programs."

"So you're going to kill them?"

Not if he could help it, there had to be an alternative and he began to study the mainframe in earnest. He could work out on sight what most of it was for some specialised add-ons were less obvious.

"Rose I want you to insert that heart into the cyber matrix feed unit," he said. The changes he had made to the heart would be broadcast to every other cyber heart with catastrophic consequences. When Rose didn't move in response he turned to look at her, she just stood there frozen like a shop window dummy but why?

So he turned to look at Tina and she wasn't moving either, not with a silver arm pinning her to a chest unit. The cyber man holding her was one of three, the others flanked the restored cyber leader and he was looking right at their ancestral enemy.

Quite a recovery thought the Doctor, the last time he'd seen the leader he'd been virtually deactivated all systems offline. Choosing to take the initiative as always the Doctor boldly announced, "You've lost, it's over."

There was nothing like putting on a confident front when things were looking decidedly dubious.

Raising its right arm the leader pointed straight at him in that perfectly condemning way of his race, "No Doctor," he announced. "It is you who has lost."

Something flashed on his wristband and Rose dropped the artificial heart. It would have taken the best fielder in the world to catch the tumbling heart, or a desperate time lord with uncanny reflexes. Clearly both the Doctor held the device an inch from the floor in his right hand, balanced on one leg he looked up at Rose's blank features and smiled, she did not smile back.

"Not yet," he said cheekily. "I still have this."

The leader gestured towards Tina, "And we have this."

"Her?" The time lord made his tone casual to the point of uninterested. "She's nothing to me just a money-grubbing mercenary on the make, I don't care what you do to her."

Bastard! Tina's eyes flashed. You're welcome his returning look said with just the merest hint that he might not mean it. The leader looked from her to him then came to a decision,

"I do not believe you Doctor, your past suggests a sentimentality that borders on the puerile."

Psychoanalysis from a walking machine, now the Doctor had heard everything. The leader was right though.

"If it comes to a choice between her and stopping you from destroying earth's future I think my conscience will forgive me."

The large ebony head inclined slowly before responding, "But you do not know who this female truly is, even she does not know her real origins."

Something very nasty nagged at the back of the Doctor's mind, what was the cyber leader hinting at?

"Explain that remark."

"I'm an orphan," Tina gasped. "Brought up by a couple of Celestia Prime."

Again the leader's head moved in that curiously mocking way it had. "But they were not your parents, the woman not your mother."

"I never knew who she was," Tina replied.

In answer to this the leader lifted his other hand and waved at the facsimile Rose Tyler, "Permit me to introduce you to her, or rather her replica."

No – every instinct the Doctor had tried to deny it. Tina could not be Rose's daughter, he couldn't let himself believe that it was a lie, strategy. Why then did part of him believe it or at least accept it was possible. He looked again at Tina's eyes, the shape of her nose, the full lips even her curious accent with its hint of south London.

"He's lying Tina!" The words flew from his tongue. But Tina was stunned, unable to respond.

"We have birth records," the leader went on. "You may view them if you choose."

"When have the cyber men ever told me the truth?"

"Why should we lie about this?"

Yes why indeed? It was just remotely possible of course, but even if it was his hand was forced he knew what he had to do and there was no point putting it off.

Pivoting rapidly he thrust the artificial heart towards a slot chosen not entirely at random. It was halfway in when the Rose android grabbed his arm.

"So close," mocked the leader. "And yet so far."

Irony from the unemotional, whatever next? Rose squeezed his radius and ulna bones together threatening to snap both, she probably had the strength to rip his entire arm off. Cyber troopers advanced, it would take them only seconds to reach him.

"Let the Doctor live just long enough to witness the death of Tina Tyler," came their leader's snug declaration.

Looking up at Rose's glassy eyes the time lord felt perspiration run down both cheeks then he said just two words, words he hoped her CPU would understand.

"Bad Wolf!"

She let go of him instantly swung around and punched the first cyber man in the chest with both fists, such was the force of the blow that the chest unit imploded, bursting in a spray of amber foam. With an electronic gurgle the trooper fell into his colleague deflecting him off course and in a wild tangle they thrashed about.

Next Rose ran at the leader ready to do the same to him.

With cold deliberation he fired – chest gun, helmet gun, arm laser.

The combined fire caused Rose to vaporise in a fierce magnesium white nova.

Tina screamed – pain, grief, hatred – all combined to make a terrible sound. But she was still held so she couldn't do anything, only the Doctor could. He inserted the heart and at once its lethal cyber destruct codes flooded into the mainframe. The next thing to scream was the cyber leader.

"Are you sure you want to do this Tina?"

They were stood outside the TARDIS, on the journey to it they had based dozens of frozen or fallen cyber men, not one had made a move against them. A mass electronic heart attack, not one of them seemed to have survived it. The kids had but they were dazed, amnesiac, utterly lost. They would need surgery, counselling and a lot of care. The Doctor had called UNIT and demanded that they send a Professor Shaw, because she'd know what to do.

"Yes," Tina replied. "I'm sure."

"Rose probably isn't your mother, you do know that don't you?"

She met his gaze – do I, do you Doctor? There's only one way to find out.

END 


End file.
